Editorial: BART's brush with Marin keeps stirring debate

SOME ISSUES refuse to go quietly into the night. After 50 years, why BART isn't running through Marin certainly qualifies.

BART, by most accounts, dropped Marin before the county could make the decision as to whether it wanted to be part of the vote on Bay Area Rapid Transit.

Marin likely would be a different place if BART had reached across the Golden Gate Bridge. We don't agree with those who are convinced it would have been better.

Development pressures would have been more intense. The 1960s battle to preserve the Marin Headlands from being turned into a city of 30,000 people might have gone the other way.

There might not be a fleet of ferries gliding across the bay.

And instead of the financially troubled Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit train, Marin might be battling over whether to expand BART and paying more in taxes.

It often is more fun to play the "what if" game than it is to deal with reality.

BART nearly was reality in Marin, but political realities - getting enough votes to pass the BART tax - forced the fledgling system's leaders to trim San Mateo and Marin counties from the dream of a Bay Area-wide system. They did the math and calculated that the system could not afford to take a chance on voters and costs in the two counties. Instead, BART's leaders focused their vision on San Francisco, Alameda and Contra Costa.

San Mateo County stepped away from BART.

Marin's path was more convoluted.

BART's leaders were worried that questions surrounding the system being able to deliver on its promise to reach its tracks into Marin might hurt its chances to win local voters for the Bay Area tax measure.

As then-county Supervisor Peter Behr said in 1962: "There is one significant difference - (San Mateo) withdrew voluntarily. We are withdrawing involuntarily and upon request."

One could say that BART threw Marin under the bus called political expediency.

BART bosses realized that in 1962, Marin didn't have the population, voter support or tax base that made it worth the projected cost of running tracks across the bridge and up and down the county.

A 1990 study of running BART tracks across the Golden Gate Bridge put the cost at $3 billion, a price tag too costly - then and today.

The local focus then turned to launching a passenger train in the North Bay, which voters finally embraced in 2008 on the fourth try. Launching the SMART train on 70 miles of tracks from Cloverdale to Larkspur is facing budget problems, including the economic downturn.

SMART will still be cheaper to build than BART in Marin, even though it won't run across the Golden Gate Bridge.

It is unlikely BART would have solved Marin's transportation problems.

Even with BART carrying 300,000 passengers a day, East Bay counties have had to add and widen freeways, expand their network of buses and endure traffic congestion. What BART has provided to Bay Area commuters is another mode of travel, one that generates less pollution-per-traveler than fossil fuel-dependent buses, cars and ferries.

BART is convenient and dependable for many commuters, but certainly doesn't work for everyone.

Marin, land-use and commute patterns have changed dramatically over the decades and no longer match BART's vision that focused on San Francisco as the primary commute destination.

Today, jobs in Marin and Sonoma are the primary destinations for North Bay commuters and future SMART riders.

BART likely would have altered that dynamic, but while some of SMART's critics like to harp that Marin missed out by not being part of BART, it makes more sense to focus on getting SMART rolling and fulfilling the transit vision of the nearly 70 percent of voters who backed the train in 2008.